An ever-increasing ageing population and growing comorbidities has led to an increase in the demand for healthcare. It has become apparent that going to accident and emergency (A&E) and then being admitted to hospital has become the default route for urgent and emergency care. A major problem is the growing proportion of patients attending A&E departments who are being admitted. Ten years ago in the UK it was fewer than one in five. Now it is more than one in four. This not only puts pressure on the medical staff in the A&E department, but also on the National Health Service (NHS) as a whole. It is estimated that at least a fifth of patients admitted as emergencies could be managed outside of hospital.
To try and address this issue, the NHS has introduced a free number for patients with urgent, but not life-threatening symptoms (NHS 111 service). The call centres are manned by trained call handlers. However, reports have emerged of patients facing long waits for advice, and emergency services have being inundated with patients who have been either incorrectly referred by the call handlers or who are simply unable to get any help at all.
By July 2013, there were over half a million calls to the NHS 111 service. Scaled up, this represents over 9 million calls per year across England of which a substantial amount will be referred to some form of urgent care such as an A&E department. Significantly, over 50% of these calls are from patients with long term conditions, and the number of people with long term conditions is set to grow.
It would be desirable to have a device which would allow patients to contact their healthcare provider and alleviate their concerns without putting pressure on the healthcare provider.
It would also be useful to produce a device, such as a phone, which is capable of providing a set of patient observations during a phone consultation in real-time and for use in telehealth applications. In particular, it would be useful to provide a low cost phone to every patient that is likely to use a healthcare service frequently, such as patients who have recently been discharged from hospital.
Smart phones have become increasingly popular with the general public for their diverse abilities such as navigation, social networking, and multimedia facilities to name but a few. These phones are equipped with high end processors, high resolution cameras, built-in sensors like accelerometers, orientation-sensors, light-sensors, and much more. Motivated by the capability of smart phones and their extensive usage, they are being increasingly utilized in the healthcare industry and for bio-medical applications.
However, smart phones are very expensive, and elderly patients often find them overly complicated to use. It would be desirable to produce a cheap alternative phone which is capable of measuring vital signs. Furthermore, smart phones use a wireless or Bluetooth™ connection in order to transmit and receive data, which can be less reliable than fixed phone lines and can cause confusion for users when they fail to connect. It would be useful to send the data through an analogue signal (such as a fixed telephone line) where no wireless or Bluetooth™ connection is required.
The apparatus and methods described herein may address one or more of these issues.
The listing or discussion of a prior-published document or any background in this specification should not necessarily be taken as an acknowledgement that the document or background is part of the state of the art or is common general knowledge.